Present and Future Scientific Computation Environments
by
Steve Hague
The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd

For many years in computing, there have been efforts to build problem-solving environments (PSEs). These efforts are continuing but there is a growing recognition (e.g. as noted in the US Government's PITAC report) that lessons learnt from one major software construction exercise must in some effective way be fed into later exercises. If this consolidation does not take place, then each PSE construction exercise, no matter how convincing its showcase examples are, could essentially be a one-off event; not necessarily a waste of money but potentially a lost opportunity for advancing the "science" of PSE construction. So the general question is : are common PSE software architectures emerging? In this presentation, we will suggest areas in which progress towards component-based architectures has been or might be made, and look at some examples of current and next generation PSEs in the area of computational science.

Date received: March 24, 2000

Copyright © 2000 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caev-05.